Is General Motors making a mistake by closing its last plant in West Michigan?

Press Photo/Lance Wynn General Motors' plant at 300 36th St. SW set a high standard for quality: only 19 parts rejected for each million produced.

Wouldn't you know it?

Oil would fall below $70 a barrel just days after the stunning announcement that General Motors will close its Wyoming plant, the last one in West Michigan.

But cheaper oil -- at half of its peak price -- came too late to save what by all accounts is one of the premier plants in GM's universe.

It raises the fear that the automaker will throw overboard a high-quality operation, not easily duplicated, in a market that certainly will shift again, even if no one knows how or when.

GM also will be tossing away trained and productive workers -- hard-to-replace assets -- who could play an important role in its recovery.

But the crisis du jour, expensive oil, is the chief reason the plant will be history.

The run-up in oil prices, reaching $147 a barrel last summer, forced GM to reinvent its lineup of vehicles and reorganize manufacturing so parts plants are next to assembly plants to shrink transportation costs.

A sense of urgency really kicked in after September car sales fell 15 percent and October's sales are expected to be gloomy. With its stock price lower than a cup of fancy Starbuck's coffee, GM had to take drastic steps immediately.

For the Wyoming plant, high-priced oil spelled doom in a double-barreled way -- not only did the plant punch out parts for unpopular SUVs and pickups, but it's too far from assembly plants.

Many, including the local union president, believed decades of quality work and legendary labor harmony would save the plant.

But no such luck. By late 2009, GM will walk away from one of the finest metal stamping and tool-and-die operations in the country.

This could be a mistake made in the chaos and panic of an industry being whipsawed by a tumultuous -- but always shifting -- market.

Quality not easily replaced

You have to ask whether GM will ever duplicate what it has in that brick building at 36th and Buchanan Avenue.

If ever GM needed to hang onto its highest-quality producers, it is now. Its grip on the world market will depend on convincing car shoppers that GM spells quality.

Press File PhotoThis $40 million transfer press was installed just last year. It creates outer box panels for full-size GMC and Chevy pickups and door frame openings for the Suburban and Tahoe.

This plant leaves in the dust the world class standard for quality -- 25 rejected parts per million. In the past three years, its average rejection rate is a mere 19 in every million parts.

Imagine how tiny that is -- 19 in 1,000,000.

The industry authority on productivity, the Harbour Report, ranks the plant among the top five for all automotive stamping plants in North America.

The plant's cost to produce per ton is among the best in GM.

Money talks the loudest. Based on the plant's performance and smooth union-management relations, GM awarded it work for some of the best-selling lines and, since 2003, invested $100 million in new presses.

Industry people who walk through the 2 million-square-foot plant marvel at its sophistication and efficiency.

"I hope they know what they are doing. They are closing one of the finest plants around," lamented an industry veteran.

Birgit Klohs, who heads The Right Place economic development agency, calls the plant "a star," and recalled an encounter that underscored its prowess.

A few years ago she found herself sitting next to a GM employee on a flight to Germany.

"He was on the way to buy stamping equipment for this plant, and he started talking about it," she recalled.

"'We have two stamping plants in our company that are absolutely at the top of their game," he told her. "'And the Wyoming one is No. 1.'"

The city of Wyoming expects to form a committee to urge GM to rethink its decision. They will probably have as little luck as other cities.

GM spokesman Chris Lee said there is not much that can be done. GM won't switch the plant's products to fuel-efficient cars; it already has too much production capacity, he said.

Cheaper oil won't be the answer either, he said.

"The long-term forecast is that people are moving away" from cars that aren't fuel efficient, he said.

GM knows it is giving up a good thing, he said. "It's a great work force that turned out great work."

That is exactly why the automaker should reconsider what it is giving up in West Michigan.

But that probably will not happen. Times are just too torturous for such reflection at GM these days.